Requiem
by X-parrot
Summary: Ryuichi mourns.


This is, in part, a missing scene for a story as yet unwritten. It's my imouto's project (if only she'd write faster!) but when we were discussing possible reactions to her events, this came into my head. Her story is not necessarily what it may seem to be from this vignette. And this is probably out of character to boot. Oh well. I didn't intend to be writing Gravi fic at all... 

Requiem 

X-parrot 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, then it makes no sound. For sound is the impact of vibrations in air on an animal's eardrums; thus, when there is no listener, there is no sound. 

Likewise, if when he sang there was no one to hear it, then there was no song. He didn't listen to himself; he never could. It was a shock every time someone played him a recording of one of his performances. He could never believe that he had done it. 

He sang now without sound, sang a song that did not exist, because there was no one to hear it, this late at night in the closed studio. K would probably be angry with him for not reaching out and throwing the glowing red switch that would record what poured from his mouth. He was losing what he sang; the music which came once would never return. He could never remember songs later, learned lyrics he himself had composed only by having them repeated to him again and again. And even then, he never knew if he remembered the words until he stood before an audience. Only then would he be able to sing, when there were listeners to make the motion of air into song. 

No, not K, K was gone, sponsoring newer talent. Tohma, then. 

Only K had no one now, no one to cajole, bully, threaten, cultivate, illuminate. 

The song he was not singing rose, sharpened, flowing words suddenly staccato with anguish. 

They had explained it to him carefully, as if to a small child, Noriko and Tohma, with K standing behind them with his arms folded and his hair hanging over his eyes. They told him how the plane had fallen and how Shuichi was gone, and he nodded and cried and hadn't tried to understand. He couldn't, not there, not with only them. They had heard him sing too many times before, now no longer listened, no longer heard, so there wouldn't be a song. 

But he did no concerts, and they wouldn't let him go out to find an audience, and so at last he ended up here. Still alone, but the song wanted to come, needed to come, until it forced its way up his throat and past his lips. 

Silly song, not to know it didn't even exist, with no one to hear it. He wished he could. Maybe it would tell him how a plane could tumble out of the sky. How a heart burning with life could stop beating just because of fire and a fall. 

He wasn't crying now, because the song which wasn't wouldn't let him; it demanded all water and all salt, all life and all grief. He remembered as he sang, though, remembered like he couldn't otherwise, all the tears which had been falling lately, as many as autumn leaves, as raindrops, as snowflakes. Only the snow hadn't cried, Yuki, tall and pale with eyes like yellow diamond. He who had been closest to Shuichi's fire was coldest now with its loss, too cold to cry, his tears frozen. 

In this song fell all those tears he couldn't shed; this song was for him if for anyone, if he were here to hear it. 

But he wasn't, and the song went unheard. 

He deserved better, Shuichi did; he deserved an elegy heard by millions, but millions were mourning already. It wasn't for their sorrow that this song fought for being; it was in acknowledgment of that single tearless pain which hurt the worst. 

And even more, it was for all those hundreds of songs that died when that heart stopped. All that beautiful music which hadn't existed and now never could. Not because there was no one listening, but because there was no one to make the sound to be heard. 

Those poor, poor songs, all lost, all gone, and no one cried for them. No one remembered them, except for him, no one knew they might have lived at all, except for him, because he had heard them. When he first saw Shuichi on that stage, he recognized them before he even heard the boy sing, just his voice had held them. He had realized what was there, and he had been so angry, that someone could have more songs than him, and better; he had been angry, and afraid, and happy, so happy, because anything so beautiful was reason for joy. He had done what he could himself for them; he had told K to leave, told him to go to Shuichi, bring out those songs. And a few had escaped, had torn themselves free, but there were so many more that had never had a chance at life... 

So very many that at last grief won over the song's desperate bid for being, and before anyone had heard it, he was no longer singing, he was crying, and it was lost without ever having lived. By the time he was done he no longer remembered what he was crying for, except for the sorrow of a song still-born. 

* * * 

At the soft sobs Tohma hit the button to end the recording, and then cut the feed to the studio. Give Ryuichi his privacy. He deserved it. 

Tohma pressed rewind, lightly tapped his fingers on the whirring cassette. The timer showed twenty-five minutes, almost a full side. And all original. Didn't have much potential on the J-pop market, but on the other side of the ocean it might have more appeal. Ryuichi had done decently in America, where a performer's fractured psyche was even more alluring than glittering good looks. 

The tape clicked, then played. A moment of silence, and then music filled his office--on stage, in the studio, he was good, but a capella, unheard... 

Tohma frowned slightly. He had missed hearing most of the song, had it taped only because he habitually recorded Ryuichi whenever he could, as there was no way to predict when the man might flash his erratic genius. By the time Tohma had realized he was taping more than random babbles, the song had been almost over, and while the voice had been fine enough, he hadn't bothered to listen to the words. 

But in the beginning they had been clearer, coming slow, then fast, rising, falling, drawing him in. Lyrics entwined with melody, they painted a picture, a glimpse built solely of sound. An image of talent like lightning, of passion high as a bird's flight. Of unfair endings. Of snow frozen so it couldn't fall, suffocating a heart, and the heat to melt it gone. And of promise denied, music murdered, beauty lost. 

And Tohma saw, only in his mind's eye but as clearly as if he were a ghost standing by his desk, a friend, a lover, a singer, Shindo Shuichi, before him, smiling, as he never would again. 

The song ended. The tape clicked. Tohma raised his head from his folded arms. 

His hands were shaking as he reached out and hit rewind again. Then he cleared the tape from beginning to end, keeping only a few minutes in the middle. That he would play for the man it was sung for, the one man who needed to hear it, who needed anything, however small, which might help cauterize the wound in his soul. 

The rest of the song he erased, that which was not meant to be heard by anyone, save the one who sang it, and the one he sang of. 

When the recorder stopped again, Tohma lifted his fingers from the key, and touched them to the single tear winding its silvery way down his cheek. 

owari 


End file.
